In the couple months after dropping off my motorcycle in Long Beach to be shipped to Melbourne, Australia I mostly spent my time in my favorite country, Colombia. Half my time was spent in the major cities like Bogota and Medellin and the rest was spent in a very small Caribbean beach town known as Taganga. In all of these places I visited in Colombia I managed to get myself into trouble, in one form or another.
So, for the sake of governed normalcy and the anti-anarchism that is my readership I'll simply report on travel related happenings, although I cannot completely guarantee the respectability of all the material.
Towards the end of December I returned from Colombia for a week to join my family for a nice Christmas holiday. For New Years Eve I celebrated for a week down in Cancun, Mexico where I spent way too much money on God knows what and even managed to get myself mugged. I've been to nearly 40 countries around the world and I ended up getting myself mugged at a beach resort town that's basically owned by America. I have concluded that rich beach towns in third world countries suck.
I arrived back in Denver on the 6th of January and I was to leave on the 7th for Melbourne, Australia. I didn't have much time to repack my bags with what I'd need for a year long motorcycle journey but I have to say that my packing skills have become expert.
I had a layover in LAX where I met my Canadian friend Wayne, who'd be joining me on the motorcycle trip on his Kawasaki KLR 650, and we took the same plane to Melbourne. The flight was about 15 hours but the time change was 19 hours ahead so we arrived two days later, on the 9th.
I had a few worries about passing through immigration in Melbourne because it's illegal to fly into Oz on a one-way ticket without having an exit route from the country. But no questions were asked and my passport was promptly stamped for entry.
Bob, our other friend who'd be joining us on his 650 BMW Dakar, we met him two hours after we arrived at the airport as he was on a different flight. The three of us rented a car but we designated the driver seat to Bob since neither Wayne nor I wanted the responsibly of driving on the wrong side of the road.
For his part Bob drove pretty well, considering. One time we tried entering a parking garage. When the toll booth manager failed to come out of his cage, I had to knock on his window to ask if he could let us through. He laughed at me and asked if I was from the States. I took a look at the car and realized that Bob had tried entering through the exit, on the right hand side of the road. The three of us smart fellows hadn't realized that we were on the wrong side of the road.
During the weekend, since the customs office was closed for picking up our motorcycles, I stayed with an Aussie friend named Ben. I met him in Buenos Aires, Argentina in early October. He lived thirty miles north of the city in the ‘bush'.
He still lives with his parents and they were pretty cool about me hanging around for the weekend. His mom was a killer, very good looking, and I had a bit of a crush on her. His dad was awesome as well and he's an avid traveler. For dinner they fed me Kangaroo which turned out to be a new favorite food. I did, however, feel bad that I was eating an animal that I had never seen.
Back in the city on Tuesday we passed our bikes through customs and quarantine pretty quickly, but it was mostly about money I believe, over five hundred dollars. It cost nearly as much to ship the bikes as it did to retrieve them. Not wanting to spend too much time learning how to drive on the wrong side of the road in a major city we drove to the port in
the south of Melbourne to purchase tickets to Tasmania.
It was still early afternoon when we bought our tickets for the ferry but it departed at 8pm so we had time on our hands. I left my motorcycle parked near the docks. I took the train back into the center and walked around and bought necessary items such as an adapter for the electrical outlets so I can actually plug things in, like my laptop.
It was a massive ferry, eleven hour and overnight to Taz, with eight decks, the bottom three for motor vehicles. Our seats were on deck seven at the bow of the boat overlooking the water from large windows. We spent most our time at the bar on deck six watching Cricket and pretending like we knew what the hell was going on.
The boat was to arrive at Devonport at seven in the morning but the intercom woke us up at six fifteen so we had enough time to get our stuff together and have breakfast in the cafeteria on deck six.
Not wanting to waste any time we drove straight off of the ship and headed towards Launceston. This short ninety kilometer journey from Devonport to Launceston was pretty wonderful scenery. I wanted to stop and take a few pictures but we were on a main highway. We stopped for a coffee then headed out on smaller roads that turned into dirt. We were on these small roads for most of the day.
Bob and I had just stopped to look at road signs; Wayne was still riding behind us. I watched as Wayne was riding up to us. He hit a bump while he was slowing down and his front tire locked and started to slide. The bike went out from under him and he landed on his right side, tucking in his head. Bob and I pulled up the bike and let Wayne lay there to catch his breath, he couldn't breath. He didn't look so good.
A few minutes later he got up but was holding his ribs, he thought something was broken. Our destined stop, St Helens, to spend the night, was only a half hour away. We made it there and Bob and Wayne booked a hotel. I went off to find a campsite near the beach because I wanted to try out my new camping gear that I bought before I shipped the bike; a one man tent and a sleeping bag - both of which easily fit in one of my panniers. The campsite was bit rubbish but it was free. I set up camp there (I'm proud to say I setup my tent correctly the first time around and it only took a few minutes) and I went back to check on Wayne.
Wayne ended up going to the hospital and they just gave him drugs. They wanted to transport him two hours away to Hobart (capital of Taz) to take x-ray pictures but he wouldn't have that. I'm pretty sure he broke his ribs. He'll stay around St Helens for a week healing up while Bob and I explore around the island.
Sleeping in the tent was very nice. Very roomy for a one man tent I'd have to say. No sore or achy bones in the morning, the sleeping bag was very comfy.
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